A Room of His Own
by Zen Monk
Summary: In which Fenris sees the characteristic of each individual based on their habitat. What is hopefully an introspective look in how individuals express themselves depending on their environment, and how Fenris eventually creates his own identity.
1. Chapter 1

All he owned was five silvers, eight coppers and some bits of hack-silver that could barely buy him a bit of flat bread from handcart vendors in Kirkwall's Alienage. A small leather pouch with dried elfroot that could be boiled or chewed on, light and green-smelling, and it was all he could rely on for healing; it was just enough to ease sores and infection but without any injury kits to supplement he could only rely on not getting injured to keep his health.

From another leather pouch on his belt, he had a smooth stone that he can used to hone his blade. He found two matches, a spool of thread and a broken needle, some bits of stale jerky, and finally a ring he had found on the road that had an inkling of magical protection that made his skin hum.

Aside from is sword, his armor and his life,all his worldly possessions can be gathered and accounted for on a rough-hewn table that lie on the left hand side of the small room he rented in the Hanged Man. And that would soon be gone by the time the dawn appears.

He placed his elbows on the table, mindful of splinters, and rested his forehead on his palms. He glanced over his things again, counting and reevaluating and thought this night to be the most disappointing of all nights.

Upon arriving Kirkwall he hoped to blend in with the throngs of Fereldan refugees and the sullen masses of Lowtown. He hoped he could hide in the maddening alleyways that go nowhere, and lose himself in the labyrinthine steps that frequently challenges the most able-bodied into wondering whether the city is all hills and valleys of old, carved stone and mismatched windows. He could be like another hairline crack in the ground, another patch of weeds that grow incessantly and inoffensively in the corner like many others who insert themselves in city built on bleak histories and grotesque defiance.

But he find that madness has a pattern, and each crack and gutter and drain that seemed more nonsensical as time passes had instead revealed symbols and half-images of things vaguely Tevinter, and when he realized how even his present and the city's present is different from the past, shared history has determined that Tevinter luck would follow and there they be disembarking and making litters going up to Hightown to what was Denarius' winter home.

He spied the mansion from inconspicuous corners, playing the waylaid elf from distant lands and customs running messages for his masters, and saw to his immediate panic and horror that there were servants he knew scurrying about making the mansion ready. When he scrounged up enough bits, he had boys on the street giving him observations and with each new discovery his anxiety grew and grew and all the vague Tevinter remnants in the city began to recover more of their insidious meaning and it felt the high walls were reaching ever higher until he is a rat in a pit waiting for darkspawn to find and pop his head.

With clarity, sudden as a dive into cold water, he thought that this would be it; the final confrontation; the last defiance.

He gather what resources he could, made plans and sharpened his blades while imagining himself back in Seheron, with jungles so green it glowed with heat and the air is pungent, and in contemplation he decided he should end his run as it should have been when it first began: as a proud man free and unbidden, just like the Fog Warriors.

He had seen his victory; he had seen his death. And Fenris focused on the reality in that Denarius is a powerful Magister and must also remember this is not a hit-and-run battle.

And so he hired what he hoped were skilled mercenaries and upon meeting Hawke's band his plans fell apart.

There was no one in the mansion despite evidence proving the contrary. Kitchen fires lit. Candles lit on some sconces in hallways. Recently dusted mantles and bookcases and even the smell of fresh linen in bedrooms and on tables. There were, instead, Rage and Sloth demons and the sole horror that hid in Denarius' bedroom when the key was found. The taint of blood was fresh upon slaying them back into the Fade, and it was clear that what transpired was the complete annihilation of the servants through demon summoning whilst their loathsome caster fled away.

There was not a trace: no personal effects, evidence of spellcasting were removed, and not even a paper trail to dictate whether some dock guard gave a ship leave back towards Tevinter. All that transpired within the mansion were the vast splinters of wood from unsuspecting furniture, sheaves of paper on the floor next to corpses of books like a ravaging took place, glass and debris from ceiling to floor. Without the lingering traces of the Fade as proof, it looked like a sacking of a house in its off-season.

"Gone," the word left his lips more like a sigh than it did when he had said it towards Hawke. Gone was his resolution to break free, gloriously, and of valorous death. Gone was Denarius, of whom Fenris could admit a part of him still feared of the magister's power and had been loathed to greet it. Yet also gone was certainty, and he remains unsure of whether he should run from Kirkwall, where a trap outside of the city's parameters and her guardians could catch him unawares and unprepared, or stay in the place where at any moment he could be snatched unknowingly from the crowd by slave-traders in disguise. He could have, as he did before, run off with the nearest group mercenaries who are always looking around for new jobs and then be off on a new route once he felt he had made sufficient distance. He could have stolen away on a ship and go further south towards Fereldan or westward towards Orlais or the Anders. He could even find an expedition ship to go further East, where the Qunari was said to have originated and wonder if maybe a place in the Qun is preferable from unbidden wandering.

"Gone." He said it to the empty air in his empty room that held only a chair, a table and a cot. The walls were uninsulated and thin, because he got a lesser room, and had gotten used to the loud snores and sleep sounds of others and the occasional fucking. Whatever evidence of past inhabitants were found only in smells, scratches in the wood and in the odd scraps of trash and paper found before being burned away in the grate. All would fade away in the passing of time, and a mark from yesterday would just as easily be a dusty stain the next.

Fenris had nothing distinct to leave this room by, and nor had he ever wanted to by force of habit whether when he had been as a slave or as he is now as a runaway. He could leave now and nothing would be changed for the next guest.

He thought again of Hawke, whose given name Marian gives a stark contrast in its femininity, and whose femininity can be observed the frayed robes she wore and on her face of which her cropped black hair enhanced rather than diminished. He saw the threat in her family name, on the streak of red on her face like a bloody badge and symbolized in her staff made of dark wood. He found a mage, though that had been no Denarius, and while he gave all his coin to her without regrets, he still felt compelled to place himself in her company out of gratitude. She helped willingly, though she had been tricked, and did so with a smile. He was almost prepared to beg if the one who answered Anso's call hadn't thought kindly of tricks, or of anything else that doesn't provide gain. He was tired from dwelling on why, and decided that Hawke simply impressed him.

The curtainless window gave change as the light outside grew progressivly brighter. He could hear the kitchens being fired and scullery maids beginning their work in the tavern. He came back from the fight late and sore, and used up the last couple of hours left in the night to dwell on past events.

He got up and scooped his belongings back into their placements, and left the room as it had been when he first arrived.


	2. A Storyteller's Dwelling

"If it isn't the elf who tricked us into fighting a Tevinter Magister."

Fenris didn't deign to turn around fully, only stopped and turned his head left, not fully looking back but showing acknowledgment.

"I pegged you for a silent type, if I hadn't already observed your eloquence to convince others to fight against oppression and abuse of power. Then again, most people go silent when the truth is offered first and not after luring your audience in with a red herring."

"…You're the beardless dwarf." This time Fenris turned to face him fully.

The dwarf gave an elegant bow. "Varric Tethras is the name. My family says that mercantile endeavors is our game, but I leave that to my heir brother. Stories are what I sell and applause is my gain."

It was early morning where the only bustle to be heard was in the kitchens and the sole scullery maid cleaning the tables and baking the bread. Drunkards still lay in a stupor upon folded arms on the tables, and the bartender does nothing but account his wares. Puddles are being mopped up and fires are being rekindled. The way Varric talked was as if he was in a great hall, and to Fenris' experience most dwarves he knew talked as if they were still in great stone halls, if it hadn't sounded so out of place in a setting so much in need of proper cleaning that it would need to be shut down a whole year in order to obtain a semblance of hygiene.

"Applause brings no sustenance to the table; the fool in motley always gets the scraps and maybe the dregs of wine if lucky."

Varric tutted in admonishment, a gesture that would have earned a swift kick to the head if he weren't already with him last night in the manse raining arrows upon demons with his crossbow.

"You underestimate the addictive influence of stories, Ser Brood-a-lot. But I must ask, for the sake of the tale I'll spin of last night, where are you going that looked almost as if you were going to skulk off anonymously like an Orlesian ending? I have to remind you that you made a promise towards Hawke that you'd aid in our mad adventure in the Deep Roads before you go gallivanting off like a symbolic shadow."

Fenris crossed his arms defensively, finding little patience for the dwarf's ridicule. "Then I must give you a most mundane ending: I'm paid up until last night. I've no more coin for another stay in the Hanged Man."

Varric waved off the humble ending. "They only kick you out at the tenth hour of morning, to make sure you're sober enough to walk out the door on your own feet. Come on: we need to keep you up to date on the Deep Roads Venture, or so my brother Bartrand liked to call it." He tilted his head back to the stairs, to the thick door that was the only one in the establishment with five kinds of locks.

Fenris gave a dour look at the door. "…You live here?"

"Indeed," said Varric, proudly.

The elf looked more closely at the dwarf, at his glossy crossbow still slung across the back like he had also just came back from the battle at the mansion, at the clean tailored clothes and at the bright supple leather jacket certainly made of the finest Bronto hide. He scrutinized at the clean and kept hair, the freshly shaved face, and the steel-toed boots that looked well-shined and blackened.

"…Are you this… establishment's owner?"

"I am actually his dearest friend."

Fenris frowned suspiciously and scowled. Varric gave his most winning smile.

"Lead on, then."

* * *

Stepping into Varric's room was like stepping through a portal. Expensive Orlesian rugs padded their feet. Tapestries line the wall, each woven with an elaborate tale of Grey Warden glories and tragedies. Timely timepieces mount the mantelpiece alongside gleaming dwarven contraptions and exquisitely carved figurines. Leather-bound books lined Elven chest-high bookcases made of Sylvan-wood. Out of habit, he self-consciously wiped the soles of his feet against his calves and wiped his palms on his thighs. It was a habit he learned in Tevinter and while he hold disdain towards pretension he found none here and treaded carefully here out of respect.

"Just to make things clear, I only inherited the Dwarven knick-knacks. Everything else if out of my own interest and curiosity."

"Most nobility would consider all priceless things curiosities rather than as respectable things."

"Good thing I'm not part of the noble caste, then."

Fenris side-eyed the dwarf. "No. It is common knowledge that the merchant class always had ties with the Coterie."

Varric placed his left hand on his chest and staggered theatrically to his desk. "You wound me, Ser Elf! Such accurate accusation must only be spared for the ones who are actually guilty and not to those unfairly associated." He collapsed in his chair with a heaving sigh and gazed about his helplessly. "Ah… but I must tell you, if you're going to take it with a grain of salt or not, that I put all my efforts to making sure the Tethras merchant family is squeaky clean and Coterie-less. Bartrand's going to say that all credit goes to him, but we both know that my part in the family is exerted on making sure the guardsmen sees us legitimate and murder-free."

Fenris examined Rivaini fertility idol on a shelf, voluptuous and serene-faced. "Is this Bartrand the leader of this expedition?"

"Officially."

Fenris moved on to the books, and can identify which is Orlesian and which is Fereldan by way of examining their insignias and text styles. "And your role is…?"

"Quality assurance. It's not healthy for anyone to have only treasure-seekers and hired mercenaries as part of our merry band underground."

Fenris straightened his back, satisfied in his inspection. "Why does Hawke take such an interest in this?"

"What's inferred is that the expedition would bring fame and wealth to all participating. Provided, that we actually find treasure for wealth and survived to be famous. What's implied is that all would bring back influence to her family and protection from the Templars, as apostate mages oft aspire."

The slave scoffed in disgust. "And once more, the one with unchecked power scurries for a hole to hide from those keeping them in check."

"Such as yourself?"

Fenris glared back, sharply.

"Those magical tattoos literally make you a marked man. I bet you were once caught red-handed, or rather, glowing lyrium murder-handed. Tell me, what did you do in Tevinter that would bring the ire of a magister master down upon you."

"I run around alive and free, away from a master's gaze, and these are markings that I've never wanted that were given to me freely. A living treasure to behold and a useful weapon to be wielded."

"Runaways are never free."

"And what does a man who has never been chained all his life would know such wisdom regarding slaves?" Fenris asked.

"I know what it's like to be in debt, whether you asked for it or not, and how freeing it truly is to be have paid it off. It may be hard to pay off those murder tattoos, as you've so clearly stated at Hawke who've said something similar, but where you're from complete control over another person's life usually suffices. Now how about this as a solution to alleviate your problem: if Hawke is able to benefit from this little venture into deep dark danger, she'll gain enough clout to divert the Templars away towards less influential apostates. That same luck may apply to you."

"Even if I were to gain all the wealth of the Empress Celene, there would still be slave-catchers to drag me back to Tevinter."

"Your obtained wealth would include fire-forged brothers and sisters to defend you, if you prove valiant enough. Coin is not the sole unit of wealth. Fame brings supporters and allies could be gained through shared conflict. Look around you, elf." Varric gestured toward his accumulated knowledge in various forms. "Do you think I have all of this to stroke my vanity- wait, let me rephrase that. Do you think that I have all of this because I see its value in terms of gold? I see the value in what they share with me, and as reminders of what I can share with others. Hawke may want gold and fame to secure herself as an affluent member of society, but you should know that she has a family living in squalor. A common enough tale of woe for anyone living in Lowtown and Darktown, but not a common enough tale for its significance to be diminished."

Varric gestured at the seat opposite him across the desk. Fenris looked at it warily before finally sitting down. It was the first time that anyone had ever invited him to sit as equals.

"So Varric, are you a treasure seeker looking to add something to your room to share?"

"I told you: I sell stories."

"Even if there's no gold at stake? When you don't have enemies encroaching upon your every step and lurking behind every shadow waiting to catch you? When you've no other power except a common resistance to lyrium and magic as is expected of your race, as well as a silver tongue?"

"For an ex-slave, you're surprisingly eloquent. Were you merely just a warrior slave?"

"What do you need to prove to others when you don't have to? I see comfort in your life that I envy, free from poverty and enslavement. Is it the thrill?"

"I seek a past woven by experience, as opposed to my brother Bartrand, who seeks a past through physical objects that are survived from past glories."

Fenris looked around again, at each artwork and each sculpture and at every bookshelf. All were reminders of history and he was reminded that his own began with pain and then the numbing existence as a slave and his reawakening during the jungles of Seheron. He had wished many times for a reminder of that experience, and began to understand a little bit more about Varric.

"All right then. What does the expedition entail and what must I do?"


End file.
